Sempstress

I just got round to pulling all the pictures off my camera – something I clearly need to do more often, because christmas was still on there….  One of my gifts for my sister was a pair of socks. Read the rest of this entry »

All the hurdles have been jumped and the red tape has been politely rolled into a neat ball, and I’ve finally received my Associate in Applied Science (Fashion Design – Honors) and my Certificate for completing the Fashion Entrepreneurship program (with Honors).   Read the rest of this entry »

So I just realized that I’m getting a whole mass of 404s (ie, the dreaded “File Not Found” error). I don’t know why that was a surprise, since I moved everything last August. I’ve added little redirect-y pagey-poos for the worst offenders. I guess I should have done that last August… Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right! I’m half of the costuming team for Chicago at Wheaton Drama. If you’re close to Chicago (the city) and want to be in Chicago (the musical), here’s the audition info… Read the rest of this entry »

The surviving pattern published in Juan de Alcega’s ‘Libro de Geometria, Practica y Traca’(1589) represents almost everything we know about the farthingale. Most articles on recreating the Alcega farthingale focus on faithfully reproducing the pattern based on fabric widths. Honestly, though, calling this a “pattern” is a bit of an overstatement: the book was more intended as a series of cutting diagrams to help tailors avoid waste. The problem is, Alcega included some rather sharp commentary on on what he considered the proper size for the bottom hoop of the farthingale, but no real information on the size of the intended wearer. Complicating things further, modern bodies aren’t build quite like the popular model of the 16th century. So what’s a costumer to do? How about some trigonometry!

Trust me, this won’t hurt. Read the rest of this entry »

How totally cool is that? I’m using wp e-commerce, and in spite of all the problem reports, it seems to work just fine for my purposes (ye olde digital downloads). Well, at least, it seems to work just fine here. On my little test server (which is my mac, running Apache/mySQL through MAMP) it’s hopelessly cranky and will not produce download links for files purchased. Le sigh. Read the rest of this entry »

I really hate to do this on a “real” site, but I’m testing out some cart software at the moment. Don’t be alarmed by anything weird you might see (like empty product pages, etc)…. Sorry!

Yet another dry, dusty pile of academic writing… This time, the topic is the corsetry/torso support of the 16th century.  I find the full history of the artificial silhouette totally fascinating, and I’m geeked beyond belief on the actual genesis of the corset.  In the 16th century alone, a bunch of different devices are in play.  Corsets, obviously – who doesn’t know about the Pfaltzgrafin and Effigy corsets by now?  Wardrobe warrants also list stomachers (for Tudor gowns) made of pasteboard covered with tapheta – that’s certainly stiff enough to smooth the front of the torso into the signature tudor inverted, featureless cone.  By the end of the period, warrants talk about busks made of whalebone and wire, quilted with sarconet.  (How does that fit into a channel in a corset?!?  Or does the end of the era, with it’s open-fronted gowns, turn back to the same infrastructure used by the earlier tudor gowns with stiffened stomachers?  I have my theories, obviously….)

So here is…. Everything I know About 16th Century Corsetry, Read the rest of this entry »

This is an excerpt from a research paper I did a while back. The paper itself is 40 pages and covers 4 centuries of support skirts and corsetry. I figure it’s more digestible in smaller chunks. Please note: my regularly scheduled writing style has been suspended in favor of something more palatable to the hardcore academia types. Special thanks go to Stephanie for her proof-reading skills.

And now for Everything I Know About 16th Century Support Skirts… Read the rest of this entry »

Well, ok, by “made” I really mean “found one I liked a lot and hacked at it to get the details right then changed the graphics”. But, however you want to say it, Sempstress running under Wordpress is starting to look a lot more like home…. :)

In other news, Read the rest of this entry »